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I swallow the rest of my drink.
I am completely, utterly, and irrevocably in love with him.
The room spins around me. I knew I was in love with him before, but that was different. I knew I had these feelings toward him, but I didn’t know what to do with them. Now that I’ve accepted these feelings, what the fuck do I do? He will never want to settle down. Ever. He’s Nate Riverside-Malum. His cock may had been bounced around on a lot, (high fucking traffic zone), but his heart and his soul? Completely unattainable. Now that I’ve found myself in this pool of feelings for him, I’m afraid I might drown in them. He can never know, because he doesn’t take me seriously. He banters with me, sure, but that’s all it is, and even I know that there’s no way I’d ever be allowed into his heart and soul. People think that he would fall in love easily because he likes to fuck around, but that’s not true at all. He gave his cock freely—to girls who he deemed worthy—for his pleasure. Putting love on the table will never be in his cards, he kept his heart in a cage.
“Tillie?” Bailey laughs, swiping the tears. “Thoughts?”
“On?” I ask, gulping past my revelations. I reach for the ridiculously expensive bourbon.
“If you had to have sex with Johnny Depp—”
I shake my head. “Stop right there…”
Bailey tilts her head and the table falls quiet.
“I will always do Johnny Depp…” I add casually.
The table laughs and Bailey giggles. “See! Okay, so if you had to choose one of his characters to have sex with, who would it be?”
“Easy, Jack Sparrow…”
Bailey’s lips pinch in.
“Why?” I ask, eyebrows raised. “Who did you pick?”
“…Edward Scissorhands?”
I almost spit out my drink. “What?” Then I start laughing, my tummy hurting. “Why? I couldn’t be more shocked if you had said Willy Wonka!”
She shrugs. “Well, he would be my second choice!”
Girl is weird as fuck, which is why I love her.
Love. I wrap my lips around the rim of the bourbon bottle, fake laughing as I take gulps.
“Alright…” Bishop says, grinning at us all. “Time to play a game.”
“Oh no…”
Bailey’s eyes light up in glee. This girl is so much like her twisted cousin she has no idea.
Bishop rolls his eyes. “It’s nothing like that…”
I sag in my seat. “Okay. Shoot.”
An hour later we’re all strapped up with vests and helmets and little light boxes that are flashing on our chests.
“Seriously…”
“You wanted something normal, Stuprum. Laser tag is about as normal as we get.”
“It’s not laser tag because you’re using bullets…”
“Not real bullets.” Nate rolls his eyes, and I only know that he rolls his eyes because the spotlight on my helmet is faced directly at him. His sharp jaw and articulate features only accentuated under the shadows behind the light.
“They are paintballs, still bullets!” I huff, irritation palpable.
Nate leans over and licks my face. “Stop talking. It makes my dick twitchy.”
I glare at him.
There are two teams. Me, Bishop, Nate, Abel, Chase, and Cash on this team, and Brantley, Bailey, Eli, Hunter, and Ace, on their team. Saint is still a touchy subject, since he disappeared a couple of months ago. Nate had said he had gone rogue, which makes me sad.
“Alright!” Chase snaps at all of us, his long blonde hair tied into a top knot. His eyes narrow on me. “Stop laughing at me Stuprum…”
“I’m sorry, you’re just so pretty.”
“You can braid my hair if you help us win…” He winks.
I straighten. “Let’s do this shit.”
We figure out a game plan and then go our separate ways. The forest blankets me in its darkness, spilling around my feet like a dead river, probably filled with the damn Loch Ness monster.
An arm wraps around my waist and pulls me against a hard chest.
I spin around, smacking Nate. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“We can’t fuck again.”
“I know,” I snap, shoving his chest. “Why did you have to scare the shit out of me just to say that?” My heart sinks.
“Just making it clear so you stop looking at me like I’m a fucking snack and you’ve been starved all your life.”
You’re a six-course meal, not a fucking snack.
“Whatever.” I turn in my steps, raising my gun up and looking through the scope.
I leave him behind, confused about the arbitrariness of his words, but it only settles the fact that I can’t express the way I feel about him to him. I’m not ready to say it and he’s not ready to hear it.
I raise my gun at movement that shuffles through the bushes and a flash of green swipes through the blackness like a neon headlight. I shoot. Bang Bang Bang. Anger at Nate ripples through me. I jog to where I hit and smirk down at Ace, his black hair falling over his face.